The Virtual Private Network (VPN) service will soon become the sole campus-supported way for UC San Diego affiliates (currently enrolled students and faculty/staff) to access the wide breadth of Library resources—including e-journals, e-books, databases, and electronic reserve materials—from off-campus. The campus will soon discontinue the existing web proxy server, and as a result, users who are currently accessing the server through their internet browser will need to change their set-up and move to the VPN. Because the web proxy server is a passive system, many users may be unaware that they are connecting to Library resources via this method. By downloading the VPN software now, Library users can ensure undisrupted access. More information and instructions can be found at library.ucsd.edu/computing-and-technology/connect-from-off-campus. If you have trouble accessing a Library resource or have other questions, Ask A Librarian.

The Texas Digital Library (TDL), along with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin, has joined the Chronopolis digital preservation network, becoming the first new node since the network’s inception in 2008. Other nodes in the TRAC-certified digital preservation network, which is administered by the UC San Diego Library, include the University of California San Diego; the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.

“By collaborating with other mission-aligned institutions in the Chronopolis network, we are advancing our collective goal of digitally preserving our cultural and scientific heritage for this and future generations,” said Kristi Park, Executive Director of the Texas Digital Library. “In Texas, in particular, this partnership gives our state’s institutions another trusted, non-commercial option for secure long-term storage of their uniquely valuable digital materials.”

Partnering with TACC to provide a local Chronopolis replication node and access to petabyte-scale storage, TDL will offer digital preservation services to its members using DuraCloudTM@TDL for simple ingest and management. Chronopolis services will be part of a broad range of TDL Digital Preservation Services that also include managed commercial storage in the Amazon cloud, as well as Digital Preservation Network (DPN) services. The first DPN node to offer production services, Chronopolis joins DPN as one of TDL’s efforts to provide community-driven long-term preservation alternatives to Amazon storage.

“Having TDL as a partner is a strategic collaboration that makes sense for a number of reasons,” said Brian E. C. Schottlaender, Principal Administrator for Chronopolis and UC San Diego’s University Librarian. “Having TDL on board will increase the geographical diversity of the Chronopolis network, advance our shared mission to preserve critical digital materials, and extend digital preservation services throughout Texas. Read more…

Last fall, University Librarian Brian Schottlaender co-chaired an international meeting of librarians and other preservation specialists to advise the Dunhuang Research Academy on preserving thousands of still and moving images of Buddhist art in the Mogao Caves, in Dunhuang in the Gansu province in northwest China.

The Mogao Caves, which are located at a strategic point along the Silk Route, were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. The caves comprise 492 temples, featuring some of the finest examples of Buddhist art, spanning some 1,000 years.

Detail of a wall painting at the Mogao Grottoes (photo credit: Francesca Piqué)

Schottlaender and colleagues from the British Library, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Hermitage Museum, Harvard, UC Berkeley, University of Cincinnati, National Taiwan University, and other prominent institutions, were invited by the Dunhuang Research Academy to the two-day meeting, to begin consulting on a monumental project called Digital Dunhuang.

The Digital Dunhuang initiative was formed with the long-term goal of digitizing the images of the 492 caves and their cultural resources, including 3-D imaging of murals and sculptures, and the development of long-term strategies for managing and preserving these digital resources. Committee members received a three-year appointment from Wang Xudong, director of the Dunhuang Research Academy, and have prepared and submitted a set of recommendations for future activities in three key areas: digital ass et management, digital resource integration, and digital preservation.

Conservators at work in Cave 85 of the Mogao caves (photo credit: Neville Agnew)

Schottlaender’s co-chair at the International Consultative Committee is Professor Pan Yunhe, of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. In addition to the aforementioned participants, other members of the 40-member visiting team include representatives the University of Hong Kong, Microsoft Research Asia, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Peking University, Jawaharlal Nehru University Library, the National Museum in New Delhi, Zhejiang University, Wuhan University, and the University of Science and Technology of China.

Las Misiones Jesuíticas de la región Guaranítica: Una experiencia cultural y social Americana, curated by Ramon Gutiérrez (Universidad de Granada, Spain), is on display through March 16, 2016 at the UC San Diego Library (Geisel West, 2nd floor). The digital exhibit, composed of various images of Jesuit missions and mission communities operating in the greater South American Amazon region, illustrates the economic, cultural, and social ideas and practices that gave rise to this mission system.

Founded by Ignacio de Loyola, Francisco Javier, and others in 1539, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) would become an effective instrument in the Counter-Reformation. Jesuit evangelizers arrived in Brazil in 1556 and moved north to Peru and Mexico in 1572. As they carried out their evangelizing work among indigenous peoples, Jesuits also developed professional skills, so that their expansion into Europe, Asia, and America forged spaces of worldwide scientific development.

A lecture about the exhibit will be held on Wednesday, March 16 from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. in Geisel Library’s Seuss Room. Guest speaker, Graciela Maria Viñuales (Ph.D. Architecture, Universidad Nacional de Tucuman), is a specialist in the preservation and conservation of architectural heritage and restoration of monuments in Ibero-American cultures. This event is free and open to the public.

The exhibit can also be seen at the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies Conference, at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, March 17, 2016 – March 20, 2016 and at the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies (CILAS), March 21-March 24, 2016.

The slides displayed in this digital exhibit were initially created in 2013 for the Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires. It has also appeared at Universidad de Congreso (Mendoza, Argentina), Universidad de Cantabria (Santander, Spain), Instituto Ramón Llull (Barcelona, Spain), Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico), Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí (Mexico), Universidad de Lima (Perú), and Universidad Católica (Asunción, Paraguay).

The Amazonia project at UC San Diego draws on, archives, produces, and allows researchers to view digital texts, geo-referenced maps of relevant information, and 3D images of objects, urban/agricultural environments, and the forest itself in order to trace and represent this under-explored history.

Nearly 1,000 photographs depicting life in Papua New Guinea are now available for viewing on the UC San Diego Library’s Digital Collections website: lib.ucsd.edu/hutchins, photographs taken in the context of anthropological research in Papua New Guinea’s Trobriand Islands.

In 1975, anthropologist Edwin Hutchins and his wife, Dona, arrived on Kiriwina in the Trobriand Islands, where they would spend the next year conducting anthropological research. They took nearly 1000 photographs, depicting many aspects of social life and material culture, including mortuary exchanges, the construction and sailing of canoes (including elaborate kula canoes), and the fabrication of colorful fiber skirts. Ed Hutchins’ Kiriwina research resulted in his dissertation, Reasoning in discourse: an analysis of Trobriand Island land litigation (Ph.D., UCSD 1978).

The Hutchins have generously made their photographs available to the UC San Diego Library, for inclusion in the Library’s Digital Collections. Anthropology graduate student, Jordan Haug, supplied the descriptions for each of the images, in collaboration with Hutchins, a professor emeritus of Cognitive Science.

Besides their intrinsic value, the photographs offer insight on the study of Trobriand culture and history. They also provide an intriguing contrast with photographs taken in the Trobriands between 1915-1918 by Bronislaw Malinowski, one of the pioneers of 20th century anthropology. Malinowski was the first of many anthropologists to conduct long-term fieldwork in the Trobriands.

Did you know that in 2008, the smoking prevalence among young adults in California declined to 13.4 ± 0.9 percent from the peak in 1999 of 18.8 percent? Or that African American young adults had the lowest current established smoking rate among all racial/ethnic groups? Now you can access all of these facts and more in the newly available California Tobacco Survey collection in the Library’s Digital Collections (http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb5086895c). Not only are the reports available; the data itself is downloadable.

The surveys go beyond simple smoking statistics. They explore the impact of tobacco advertising, and investigate the behaviors and attitudes that impact tobacco use. In 1992, the largest percentage of teens aged 16-17 endorsed two to three “rebelliousness items.” And the largest percentage of teens who did much better than average in school also fell into the two to three rebelliousness item endorsement range! What are these mysterious rebelliousness items? (Hint: check out Table A4 in the 1992 Final Report http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb38582123)

In 1990, over 90% of both girls and boys rated “Girls controlling weight” as the number one health concern among California teens, well above “Dangers of drunk driving” and “Boys controlling weight.”

The smoking information comes from the ongoing California Tobacco Survey, a survey of California residents about smoking that takes place approximately every three years. The years 1992-2008 are now available in the Library’s Digital Collections, and contain not only reports, but the actual data, which can be downloaded and explored.

Join us for this “virtual reading” that will feature newly digitized recordings from the large archive of poetry readings created by poet and translator Paul Blackburn [1926-1971]. Blackburn played an important role in the New York poetry community, and his archive has been described as “the most comprehensive oral history of the New York poetry scene between the late 1950s and 1970.”

Thursday, May 7
4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Seuss Room, Geisel Library

The readings that Blackburn recorded are now being digitized by the UC San Diego Library. They were indexed soon after their acquisition in 1973 by UC San Diego Literature Professor Michael Davidson, who had recently been hired as the first curator of the Archive for New Poetry and who was instrumental in acquiring the final segment of Blackburn’s papers. During his tenure as curator, he built the Archive for New Poetry into one of the world’s preeminent collections documenting experimental post-WW II poetry and has continued to promote it and to advise the Library on its subsequent development. The event will honor Davidson’s many contributions to the Library over the past 40 years. An exhibit of his own works and manuscripts will be on display at the reception following the reading. This event is free and open to the public.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world online. An online library into the United States’ historical and cultural heritage, DPLA aggregates metadata — or information describing an item — and thumbnails for millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more.

The UC Libraries have recently joined the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) as a Content Hub. In our role as a DPLA Content Hub, the California Digital Library will be sharing metadata records from Calisphere, a website containing approximately 250,000 digital primary source objects contributed by libraries, archives, and museums across the state of California– including unique content from across the UC Libraries. Because of the increased exposure, the UC Libraries’ digital resources will have a broader, nationwide audience that will be able to find and discover unique collections maintained across the UC Libraries.

The UC San Diego Library is on the leading edge in the digital library world.

The fall issue of Triton Magazine, features the Library in the cover story, Books & Bytes, and provides an in-depth look at the “Digital Shift” that most libraries (including ours) have been experiencing. Learn more about our activities – both bytes and books—in this recent cover story. The UC San Diego Library is a national leader in managing this evolution.